"He who has never learned to obey cannot command." (Stoicism, Seneca, On Mercy)
True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.
My thoughts:
I suspect this one has been misunderstood and misused a lot since Seneca wrote it to Nero. As a young worker, you may have heard it from a boss who wanted his or her instructions obeyed, not questioned.
Seneca, however, wasn't talking about obedience to a person, he was talking about obedience to a principle -- logos, aka reason/logic as the distinguishing factor separating a "good" ruler from a tyrant.
Seneca long preceded and contradicted Machiavelli as a political advisor, treating mercy to opponents as the approach most likely to keep an emperor in the good graces of the public and preserve the perceived legitimacy of the ruler. In contrast, Machiavelli recommended a velvet glove / iron fist approach (bread/circuses, but paired with swift and severe punishment for dissent/opposition).
As someone concerned with dispelling, rather than preserving, the perceived legitimacy of the state, I prefer rulers who let their freak flags fly so that they're more easily seen as the sociopaths they are. Edict backed by the threat of force can never accord for very long with logos -- the second the results diverge from the ruler's desires, force takes the wheel.
But in a third sense beyond the political and bad-managerial, the aphorism has value. Applying logic and reason rather than mere whim gets better results. We didn't learn to fly by ignoring or defying gravity, we learned to fly by gaining some understanding of gravity and other constraints and obeying them.
